Air India starts direct flights to Puducherry

The Franco-Tamil town of Puducherry is now easier to get to thanks to Air India’s direct flight from Bengaluru. Flight 9I 509 will leave Bengaluru at 15.35 hrs six days a week, (except Wednesdays) and land at Puducherry an hour later. The return flight 9I 510 will leave Puducherry at 16.55 hrs on the same days to reach Bengaluru at 17.55 hrs.

The sector will be operated by Alliance Air, the national carrier’s regional arm, using an ATR turboprop aircraft. Flights will land at Lawspet airport, barely 5km from the heritage quarter of Puducherry. That saves you the 150-km, three-hour drive if you’re arriving via Chennai, or the seven-hour road journey if you’re driving down from Bengaluru.

A release from Air India said that the Puducherry flights have been timed to offer easy connections from Bengaluru to Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.

So what will it cost? For the upcoming weekend (24 April-26 April), tickets are available at Rs8,070 (return, all-inclusive). But if you don’t mind waiting for better weather and the Diwali weekend, you could get them for as low as Rs5,015 (13 November-15 November; return, all-inclusive).